Regular Expressions 101

\ban ASCII word boundary

Amazonthe literal text Amazon (case sensitive)

\ban ASCII word boundary

Negative Lookahead(?!(?:(?!<\/?a\b[^>]*>).)*?<\/a>)

Non-Capturing Group(?:(?!<\/?a\b[^>]*>).)*?

*?repeats the group contents below any number of times:

Negative Lookahead(?!<\/?a\b[^>]*>)

<the literal < (60₁₀ / 74₈ / 3C₁₆)

\/?optionally matches the literal / (47₁₀ / 57₈ / 2F₁₆)

athe literal a (97₁₀ / 141₈ / 61₁₆) (case sensitive)

\ban ASCII word boundary

Negated Character Class[^>]*

*matches any number of characters outside the set below:

>the literal > (62₁₀ / 76₈ / 3E₁₆)

.any character (except for line terminators)

<the literal < (60₁₀ / 74₈ / 3C₁₆)

\/the literal / (47₁₀ / 57₈ / 2F₁₆)

a>the literal text a> (case sensitive)

Global pattern flags

g modifier: global. Finds all matches instead of stopping after the first

m modifier: multiline. Causes ^ and $ to match the start and end of each line, not only the start and end of the string

Detailed match information will be displayed here automatically.

Search reference

Regular Expression

\bAmazon\b(?!(?:(?!<\/?a\b[^>]*>).)*?<\/a>)

New

<a>Amazon</a>Amazon
I use Amazon for that.
I use <a href="http://www.amazon.com">Amazon</a> for that.
<a href="http://www.amazon.com">My Amazon Link</a>
It will match the "Amazon" in "My Amazon Link"